It had been a long night for Shanta Sweatt. After working a 16-hour shift cleaning the Tennessee Performing Arts Center, in Nashville, and then catching the 11:15 bus to her apartment, she just wanted to take a shower and go to sleep. Instead, she wound up having a fight with the man she refers to as her “so-called boyfriend.”

When Sweatt got home that night, early in November of last year, she realized that her boyfriend had been smoking marijuana, probably in front of the kids. She was furious, words were exchanged, and he left. Sweatt finally crawled into bed after midnight, only to be awakened at about 8:30 in the morning by an insistent knock at the door. She assumed that her boyfriend was coming to get his stuff and get out of her life.

When she opened the door, police officers filled the frame, and more were waiting at her back door.

Sweatt, 36 years old, left high school in 11th grade, but she has the kind of knowledge of the law that accrues to observant residents of James A. Cayce Homes, a housing project in East Nashville.

“I’m the lease owner,” she told me. “Whatever was there, I would get blamed.”

What’s necessary, Rapping argues, is a new mind-set. Defenders need to push back against the assumption that they will instantly plead out virtually every client, rubber-stamping the prosecutor’s offer. Ember Eyster did ultimately negotiate a plea bargain for Shanta Sweatt, but in doing so she pushed back, using all the tools at her disposal to ensure that Sweatt was not incarcerated. The U.S. should also reform the bail system. We are holding people in jail simply because they lack the funds to secure their own release.

The United States is experiencing a criminal-justice crisis, just not the one the Trump administration talks about. By accepting the criminalization of everything, the bloat of the criminal-justice system, and the rise of the plea bargain, the country has guaranteed that millions of citizens will not have a fair shot at leading ordinary lives.

Read the source article at The Atlantic